Comment by RICKEY SINGH
(THE following article is reprinted, courtesy yesterday’s Barbados Weekend Nation, as appeared in the writer’s “Our Caribbean” column)

“WITH the not surprising collapse of a mediation process to resolve the long, debilitating dispute between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and West Indies Players Association (WIPA), questions of immediate relevance would be what’s the next move and how soon? Not just by the disputing parties, but more critically, CARICOM governments? 

Both the chosen mediator, the distinguished Caribbean diplomat and thinker, Sir Shridath Ramphal, as well as current CARICOM Chairman President Bharrat Jagdeo of Guyana, who initiated the mediation, have separately expressed deep disappointment. 

Though not explicit, both President Jagdeo and Sir Shridath have conveyed the impression, in my view, that the WICB, more than the WIPA, should take the rap for the collapse of the mediation process that was expected to end on a positive note by end of August. 

While the diplomat Ramphal mixed his disappointment with a plea to the followers of West Indies cricket “not to despair”, noting that “cricket is in our regional genes and cannot be lost”, the political leader and CARICOM chairman Jagdeo was making a telling observation.

He said he was not “wholly surprised over the failure (of the process), explaining that mediation was agreed to in the context  in which WIPA made all their players available for the (coming) Championship Trophy in South Africa.

“The members of the WICB did not disclose to me, or WIPA, that they had already selected a ‘B’ team for the Championship Trophy” President Jagdeo disclosed, adding that while the Board’s President (Julian Hunte) had subsequently “apologised for the omission, the damage had already been done”, resulting in weakening the mediation process and, finally, failure. 

Was it really an “omission”, or, as some think, characteristic arrogance on the part of the WICB? In defence of its integrity, the WICB seems to have an obligation to dissuade the public from thinking that its representatives did not, truthfully, enter the mediation process in bad faith by failing  to disclose, up front, that a “B” team had already been selected for the Champion Trophy scheduled for  later this month in South Africa?

Last  Monday, while WICB President Hunte was still holding his silence, the Board’s Vice-President, Dave Cameron, lost no time in announcing “arbitration” as the next move to settle the lingering dispute with the WIPA now that mediation has failed.

Cameron also took the opportunity to swipe at the WIPA players, contending that they have been constantly shifting their positions over the years while the Board kept  “putting a bandage” to problems and “each time giving, and giving and giving…” 

Really?  At the time of writing, there I was no public response from WIPA on either the collapse of mediation or to remarks by the WICB’s Cameron. But I have no doubt that a WIPA statement will be forthcoming. 

However, in considering the bigger picture–the future of West Indies cricket–it is imperative that CARICOM Heads of Government now bite the bullet with a challenge to the WICB over its failure to implement the core recommendations of the seminal  2007 report from a high-level Committee on Governance of West Indies Cricket (established by CARICOM) under the chairmanship by former Jamaica Prime Minister, P.J. Patterson. This is a matter to be revisited.